100 Years Ago

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Examiner

Writer

Posted Oct. 5, 2013 at 12:09 AM

Posted Oct. 5, 2013 at 12:09 AM

Independence, Mo.

The following items were taken from the Sept. 28 through Oct. 4, 1913, Examiner.

• Missouri illiteracy is rapidly decreasing. Ten years ago the percentage of the population made up of persons who could not read nor write was 6.4. Now it is 4.3 percent, according to a bulletin issued from the state office at Jefferson City. The negroes are rapidly being educated, as well as the white persons. Ten years ago 28.1 percent of negroes were illiterates, now only 17.4 percent of the negroes belong in that class.

• C.L. Flaugh, representing a number of property owners in Mount Washington, asked the county court to take up with the Missouri Pacific and the Kansas City Southern Railway Companies the matter of building a subway under their tracks at the place where they are crossed by Arlington Avenue. The two railways run parallel and only a few feet apart.

• Teaching a hundred foreign children how to read and write in the American language would seem a hard job for the most of us. But it is easy according to Prof. H.J. Liggett, principal of the Riverview School at Sugar Creek. Of the 171 pupils enrolled at Sugar Creek this year, at least 100 are of foreign parentage and many of them knew not a word of the English language. Italians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Swedes, Australians, Bohemians and other nationalities are represented. Their fathers are employed at the Standard Oil Refinery.

• The Mary Paxton Study Class, which has been in continuous existence for about 20 years, met at the home of Mrs. W.V. Clark on North Delaware to organize for the work of the ensuing year. Miss Azubah Chiles was elected president; Mrs. Calvin Atkins, vice president; Mrs. Llewellyn Jones secretary and treasurer; and Mrs. W. L. C. Palmer critic. They will spend the year studying the poems of Robert Browning.